Former Associated Press correspondent Nancy Shulins shares an uplifting memoir in Falling for Eli: How I lost heart, then gained hope through the love of a singular horse. Married to a great guy named Mark, Shulins wanted to start a family, but despite a long series of expensive fertility treatments, medical issues prevented her from becoming pregnant. Seeing friends and family doting on their children saddened her. Shulins even stopped walking her dog Jack in the park to avoid the “fertile Myrtles” women who had recently given birth. Then Mark introduced her to friends nearby who kept horses. Read more

Wildlife veterinarian Jerry Haigh moved from Scotland to Kenya, where he authored Wrestling With Rhinos (2002) and The Trouble With Lions (2007). Of Moose and Men: A Veterinarian’s Pursuit of the World’s Largest Deer has emerged from his subsequent experience at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Read more

Goodbye, Friend enters a crowded market of books written to guide human survivors through grief after the loss of a beloved pet. Unitarian Universalist minister Gary Kowalski came to write about pet loss after receiving a note from a congregant asking him to announce another congregant’s dog’s death. Kowalksi hesitated, wondering how the congregation would accept the news. But the entire congregation appreciated the woman’s loss and provided comfort to her. Read more

“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.” –-William Shakespeare

Lawrence Anthony, 61, died on March 2, 2012 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Following his father into the insurance industry, Anthony later turned to real estate development. In the mid-1990s Anthony bought the 5,000-acre Thula Thula private wildlife reserve in Zululand, founded in 1911. Anthony “added luxury accommodations and fine dining to attract tourists eager to see wildlife close up,” recalled Douglas Martin of The New York Times. Anthony also added vegetarian cooking classes to the Thula Thula program of entertainment and education, and made Thula Thula the headquarters for his own conservation charity, Earth Organization. In 1999 Anthony took in nine elephants who were slated for culling. This episode informed The Elephant Whisperer: My Life With the Herd in the African Wild (2009), co-authored with his brother-in-law Graham Spence. Anthony in 2005 and 2008 helped lead opposition to elephant culling in Kruger National Park. But Anthony was best known for making his way to Baghdad after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in May 2003, to help the starving animals of the Baghdad Zoo. Read more

TURLOCK, California–“There are still 2,750 hens at our Rescue Ranch facility in Vacaville and 200 hens at our Grass Valley sanctuary. 587 hens have been placed into loving homes,” Animal Place founder Kim Sturla posted on March 28, 2012, a month after volunteers coordinated by Animal Place and the Harvest Home Animal Sanctuary, in Stockton, completed the largest hen rescue on record. Read more

CAIRO–Fear of foot-and-mouth disease left thousands of camels stranded as of March 31, 2012 aboard a livestock transport ship in the Red Sea, the Egypt Independent and Al-Masry Al-Youm reported.
Thousands more camels were “stuck in a Suez quarry,” the Egypt Independent and Al-Masry Al-Youm said. In addition, the Egyptian agriculture ministry prevented the import of more than 10,000 camels from Sudan on March 27, 2012, the Egypt Independent and Al-Masry Al-Youm added. Read more

CLEVELAND, Ohio—The Federal Bureau of Investigation on February 21, 2012 arrested Meredith Marie Lowell, 27, of Cleveland Heights, Ohio, for allegedly trying to use a Facebook account accessed from a public library computer to solicit the murder of “someone who is wearing fur.”
According to an affidavit sworn on February 17, 2012 by FBI special agent Ryan M. Taylor, “On November 4, 2011 the FBI was provided information that a person owning a Facebook page under the name Anne Lowery,” an alias that Lowell acknowledged using, “posted a message on Facebook stating that Lowery wanted to hire a hit man to kill someone wearing fur.” Read more

SANTA ANITA, CHELTENHAM–Home Box Office cancelled the made-for-TV Dustin Hoffman/Nick Nolte drama series Luck on March 14, 2012 after three on-set horse fatalities in three years of videotaping at the Santa Anita race track in Arcadia, California. At Cheltenham, Glou-cestershire, United Kingdom, however, the annual four-day Festival jumps meet continued before 220,000 spectators despite the deaths of three horses on opening day, the same day that Luck ended, and two horse deaths more the next day. Read more

Editorial feature: Don’t let irrational extremists define the cause

This April 2012 ANIMAL PEOPLE editorial is written amid an unusually fiercely contested series of primary elections and state caucuses to select the Republican nominee for U.S. President in the November 2012 national election.
Animal issues have barely surfaced during the many months of speeches, debates, and electronic media commercials through which the candidates seek to rally the electorate. Almost the only mention of animals so far has come from a web site called Dogs Against Romney, posted to publicize and decry how front-runner Mitt Romney in 1983 hauled his family’s English setter Seamus on a 12-hour drive to Canada in a carrier tied to a roof rack. Several Dogs Against Romney viewers demonstrated against Romney on Valentine’s Day outside the Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York City. Read more

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